“kakistocracy” – government by the worst people
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The world could not imagine a Syria without an Assad. But it happened, and with stunning speed. The pure evil of that corrupt, malevolent regime has been obvious for years. The weakness behind the Syrian leader was not so obvious until his murderous, incompetent rule collapsed. This is the way of all tyrants.
Before Assad was forced to flee – he’d been in power for 24 years – Syria was described by the U.S. State Department as “a republic ruled by the authoritarian regime … The president makes key decisions with counsel from a small number of security advisors, ministers, and senior members of the ruling” party and “Assad and party leaders dominate all three branches of government.”
Authoritarians seem invincible until they aren’t. I wrote recently that the corruption in the next administration will soon enough become obvious, and for a while it will seem merely odious and then suddenly it will engulf everything around it.
Finally, when the end inevitably comes – it always does – it will be brutal and fast, and the wreckage will long linger.
Bashar al-Assad, a brutal sociopath, ran a corrupt, incompetent regime by surrounding himself with the worst people. He’s now living out the remainder of his dictatorial life in Putin’s Moscow.
Meanwhile Donald Trump, a born authoritarian, is constructing a truly awful, inept, corrupt American government, almost certainly the first time a president-elect has purposefully done so. The Trump government in waiting is distinguished only by its utter lack of distinction, a collection of misfits, sexual abusers, billionaires – lots of billionaires – political grifters, reality television fakers and above all loyalists.
Loyalty to the dear leader is, after all, the only real qualification that matters in the mob or in a Trump Administration.
As headlines detail the white supremacist beliefs of the Fox News personality who may soon run the Pentagon and the conspiracy embracing nonsense of the nominee to head the FBI, the stories have read as though this kakistocracy is somehow normal. But, if you are among the nearly half of the American population who thinks this show of schlock and awe is abnormal and frighteningly dangerous then you aren’t among the crazy ones.
As the writer Eliot Weinberger observed recently, only partially summarizing the coming circus:
“The future surgeon general, a Fox News regular, and the future administrator of Medicare and Medicaid, a daytime television host, sell dubious health and weight loss supplements online.
“The future director of the FBI promotes a supplement to reverse the effects of the Covid vaccine.
“The future deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism is the spokesman for a fish oil supplement.
“The future secretary of homeland security stars in an infomercial for a cosmetic dentistry business, in which she exclaims: ‘I love my new family at Smile Texas!’”
With the possible exception of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the secretary of state designate who has served on the Foreign Relations Committee and presumably could find Uganda on a map, the rest of this collection, as Weinberger wrote, “have no connection to the work they will manage, or no experience in the work they will manage, or no experience managing large bureaucracies like the bureaucracies they will manage.”
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Let’s remember this is the same Marco Rubio who in 2016 called Trump a “con artist,” and “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.” That statement, as was once said in the Nixon White House, is clearly no longer “operative,” begging the question: who changed – Trump or Rubio?
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All these jobs – really, really important jobs – are fundamental to keep Americans safe, the economy working and the essential functions of government operating. Yet, these positions are being gifted to a collection of the worse possible people. It is the American kakistocracy.
Most Americans don’t pay much attention to history, but if they did they might see the historical warnings attached to the coming government.
There will be a crisis in the next four years, likely more than one. We forget now how close the American economy came to complete collapse in 2008. That fiasco left wounds that still bleed, but without a competent adult at the Federal Reserve or a realistic Treasury secretary we might have experienced this generation’s own Great Depression. While many, many mistakes were made no one who saved the American economy back then was selling fish oil supplements.
Competency matters.
And now come the unaccountable oligarchs. America has always had its unfathomably rich men – always men – who used the power of their money and prominence to shape the way we live. A thousand efforts to prevent the kind of outsized influence the uber-rich employ in Russia or the oil kingdoms has given way to a South African immigrant, Elon Musk, becoming the un-elected co-president of the American republican.
The corruption, if you care to see it, will cause eyes to water. In a true oligarchy – and we’re getting there – guys like Musk don’t abide any rules. They act to preserve their wealth and status and polish their egos, even if it means shutting down the government by Tweet.
Journalist David Samuels had it right when he wrote, “Defining ‘corruption’ as a personal hunger for luxuries or stuffing cash in one’s pocket, as Americans often do, is to mistake the essence of the offense, which is to destroy public trust in the institutions that are supposed to keep people safe.”
CEO’s are watching all this and then making the trek to Mar a Lago to hand over their protection checks to the American mob boss. And we ain’t seen nothing, yet.
Add in the retribution, the promise to prosecute Liz Cheney, while suing an Iowa pollster, the coming pardons of January 6 rioters – many convicted for vicious acts – and blatant bullying of the press and you begin to see clearly the next four years, or more.
“Recapturing the presidency in 2024,” says Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, “is Donald Trump’s ultimate safe haven from the legal consequences of his prior crimes. He believes it will give him all the immunity he needs for the rest of his life.
“And if you think he ever plans to leave office and let the justice system come near him again, you’re too innocent to be let out of the house by yourself.”
The worst people, retribution and rampant corruption. The American mob. Not quite what the Founders had in mind.
So … Merry Christmas.
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Additional reading:
A couple of other items of interest …
Climate of fear is driving local officials to quit
A truly frightening reality in a study from California.
“In simple terms, our research suggests that at least two of every three people who serve in public office in Southern California will be threatened, intimidated or harassed during their tenure.
“Survey results suggest the average female elected official who experiences abuse is threatened or harassed at least six times as often as her male peers. Men reported being on the receiving end of abuse about once a year, while women suffer abuse almost monthly.”
Read the full story.
In praise of Christmas
The great George Orwell writing of the first post-war Christmas in 1946.
“I only add in passing that when we gorge ourselves this Christmas, if we do get the chance to gorge ourselves, it is worth giving a thought to the thousand million human beings, or thereabouts, who will be doing no such thing. For in the long run our Christmas dinners would be safer if we could make sure that everyone else had a Christmas dinner as well. But I will come back to that presently.”
Orwell was a terrific writer. Read the whole thing.
And a Happy Christmas to all and very best wishes in an uncertain New Year. Thanks for reading.
